


Found At Sea

by ithun



Category: Thor (Movies), Thor - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, M/M, Missing (Sex) Scenes, Smut, Thor: The Dark World Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-09
Updated: 2013-11-09
Packaged: 2018-01-01 00:16:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1038070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ithun/pseuds/ithun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are few who can truly take Thor in all his glory. The mortal above deck will receive a pale shadow of him. She is a mere a blink on the expanding horizon. He and Thor are something else, made to fit together. Dark and light, neatly balanced. Loki tempered on Thor and Thor honed on Loki. It has always been thus.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Found At Sea

Jane sleeps on the floating boat, slipping in and out of consciousness. At the stern Loki stands steering, until at last Thor arises and approaches. Dust storms whip past on the black lands below. 

Loki has been waiting a long time. He draws a breath to speak it --

“Attend me,” says Thor. Thor is always faster, first.

It shames Loki that lightning sparks down his spine at the words, even after all this time. So much time wasted, while they played with their toys and had their games like overgrown children. Loki is tired. Does not want to play anymore. Has been waiting for the respite and is glad of it.

When they were young and worn out with battle-play, they would rest together in some new hiding spot, gloating at their brilliance in eluding detection and capture. Loki was better at finding where to hide but Thor was better at making it safe to stay. Thor would scout the space, then sit with his big back to the exit while Loki curled up beside him. As they grew older slipping away grew complicated.

To love one’s brother above all else was a noble pursuit but Loki suspected he was particularly afflicted. It was the start and spark of his early rebellion, to feel what he felt for the boy he thought to be his kin. 

Nothing could be as it seemed, he knew quite young, if he were not meant for Thor, and Thor for him; why else were they made? Could lives be designed for such torment? The realization opened his eyes. Laws and etiquette and customs were merely illusions, and those he could bend and break.

Still from an early age Loki believed himself cursed; his father suggested it enough, while Thor glowed golden beside him. Then Thor -- Thor had known, and understood, and --

“It is unnatural,” Thor agreed, with Loki curled close in their favorite hidden place. It seemed smaller now that they were large. “I have struggled day and night with my shameful lusts, and cannot vanquish them. I fear I will go mad.”

“What if they are not shameful?” asked Loki, still young and philosophical, his heart in his throat. “Must we doubt what our minds and bodies would do? What if we were meant to know each other thus, and to deny it is the greater shame?”

“It is a test,” insisted Thor, shaking his head. “We are tested and cannot give in.” 

The stubborn resolution lasted a year, or decades, depending on the timestream. Then a battle was won, one that should have been impossible, that should have seen them dead, but they triumphed because of Loki’s tricks, and then they were alone amongst the massed dead. 

Thor took him on the battlefield, rolled him over and claimed him, rewarded him, damned him, bloodlust and bliss in the rhythm of Thor’s hips. They gasped into each other’s mouths and looked into each other’s eyes and did not speak of it for many more years, or centuries. 

In the end that was to be their pattern. Thor came to him in the moments when he was past the brink, when it seemed rules and restrictions no longer counted for much. He would limp back bruised and broken, comrades lost, and weep in Loki’s arms. He would descend victorious, the spirit of conquest itself, snatch Loki wherever he was and take him away. He would crawl into Loki’s bed on feast-nights to elude the others chasing him, and fist his hand instead in Loki’s hair. 

“Attend me,” Thor would say, as though Loki were his squire, as though he could put that distance between them. Knew that Loki was so hungry for him he would play any role --

“Attend me,” says Thor now, as they soar to certain death across alien landscapes. 

Of all that he has lost Loki missed this most of all, and it is a boon he has been awaiting with trembling expectation since the mortal fell asleep. It would be horrifically easy to bump the ship and cast her over the side and be done with all of this, but he does not. He has earned his release for good behavior and he will not jeopardize it on her insignificant account. He takes a needful breath, staring out at the roiling sky, before he turns to follow. 

He trails Thor below deck. It is dark and cramped underneath but they know the layout from their training years. Weapons, supplies, cot. Thor twists in the dark, has Loki down and spread on it before he can descend the ladder. He blinks up at the weight of eternity belting his hips and smiles.

It has changed them, to know that their hidden shame is no longer bound to blood. They are not quite brothers, when it runs to fathers; their lust would be inexplicable to many but is not forbidden. Thor wrestles him down without seeming to think about it, as he does most things.

The first bout is fast and hard, punishing, a crucible. Loki sweats and gasps through it, with Thor’s mouth open and bruising at his neck. The second time is slower, calmer, Thor’s forgiveness for what has passed between them, for what Loki had done, for how Loki has proved himself anew. Thor kisses him and rocks into him with the depth of oceans and Loki wraps his arms around Thor so that he does not drown. 

There are few who can truly take Thor in all his glory. The mortal above deck will receive a pale shadow of him. She is a mere a blink on the expanding horizon. He and Thor are something else, made to fit together. Dark and light, neatly balanced. Loki tempered on Thor and Thor honed on Loki. It has always been thus.

The third time Thor lets Loki rise over him, straddle him, ride him; and there is no better rider in many worlds than he; and Thor looks up at him with his blue eyes wide with wonder and grim sadness, and he says, damn him, “Was this not enough?”

“We are ever thus,” says Loki, thinking aloud, arching back his spine, “and ever will be; what is life without some variety, and daring?”

Thor shakes his head. “I would have abdicated in your favor. To see you fall was a pain I wished on no man. Then, your misdeeds on Earth--”

Loki reverses tactics. He bends low, and puts his forehead to Thor’s, an intimacy he has not been accorded in more years than he would count, and kisses him that he will be silent. Kissing, once furtive and stolen between them, is now allowed, and they are fierce at it, combative, competitive, as they are.

When he moves to breathe, Loki is still riding, and he pants out: “You forgive me now, though, I see it in your eyes. To succeed in saving what we both value we must trust each other as we once did; I thought you would never let me have that again, but you let me go free.”

“I have always loved you best,” says Thor, turning his face away. “And too well.”

“Say that you will stay with me when this is over, and imagine the Asgard we will make,” says Loki, with every persuasive trick he knows of body and mind, “you with the throne you were meant to have, me by your side. My reformation will be your first glorious act --”

“Ah, Loki,” murmurs Thor, pushed to the edge by clever hips, “You speak as though we will survive this.”

“You must learn to be more forward-thinking, my liege.” Loki’s lips twist, as do his thighs. He wrings groans and curses from Thor, music to the ear, until they spill and spin out into stars. When they break apart at last they lie panting, listening to the thrum of the airborne boat around them. “You and I will survive. It is a trait we share, endurance.” He runs an appreciative hand down Thor’s flank.

“There is Jane to save,” says Thor, still the stubborn boy who liked love-stories best, “and many friends on many worlds. The battle will be glorious. It always is with the right companions.” His arm is warm around Loki, could crush and revive him both. “We can hope no more but for an honorable fight.”

“That is no way to win,” tsks Loki, kissing along the corded lines of Thor’s neck. “No, today, today alone, you must think like me. We must use my ways, or all is lost.”

Thor’s expression darkens, and somewhere stormclouds gather. “Trickery and lies--”

“Will leave us living,” says Loki. He casts his eyes skyward. Sweetens the pot. “Will leave her alive.”

“I’m listening,” says Thor, in his testiest rumble.

“Excellent,” says Loki. “You know I adore it when you do. Hold on to your hammer, my love. I have a plan.”

He lays it out, drawing strategic lines on Thor’s chest. Eventually, the mighty chin relents and relaxes, the blue eyes soften, and Loki knows that he has won the day. Thor begrudgingly admits that there is some wisdom in the deception, then throws himself in headfirst. They practice to get it right. There is laughter, and tears in their eyes. 

“I tried so hard to hate you,” says Thor. “Why does it never hold?”

“I have asked myself the same question many times, with the benefit of isolated imprisonment for reflection,” Loki answers. His hands are plying Thor’s hair, making lazy braids and unbraiding them. It is an unconscious action from so long ago it is like second nature, reflexive. “The way we were raised, our lives were never our own. From cradle on we were trained and taught, primped and tutored; we went into war as soon as we could hold weapons; we spoke and bowed and scraped as we were told. You were the only thing that was mine without reserve; you were the only person who shared that life and leavened it. I have commanded many men and women to die for my own purposes; but you are the only one who has ever fought for me, who would die for me without my leave.”

“Do you ever tire of thinking so much, and wish that you could switch it off?” asks Thor with gentled humor, one golden eyebrow arched.

“Every moment of the day,” says Loki.

Thor stares up at him. It is dark under the deck but they can see each other well enough. His blue eyes are too solemn; Loki can sense Thor’s worry like a whirlpool, trying to tug him in. “Let me help you, Loki,” Thor says. “Maybe you are right. I should leave the mortal woman to her realm, and take my rightful seat, and place you at my right hand. Will you give up all your other plans, the ones hatched in the dark? Could you content yourself with me?”

It is the role that he is born to play but they are still quite young. Loki feels his lips turn up at the challenge. It is tempting, so tempting it cuts to the quick; and he thinks Thor will hold true to his word and do it all, give up the girl, take up the throne, if Loki but nods. But he cannot, not yet, and Thor knows it; that is why he asked. 

“That time will come,” Loki says instead, equivocating, his strongest suit.

Thor’s expression is pained, but he nods. “It is distant yet,” he agrees. “And we will fight again between.”

“Yes.” Loki will not deny their shared farsight. “I would beg you to join me now, to give up the struggle to save short-lived sheep and help me build a beautiful galaxy; but I know what you would say to me already, and my heart is a soft one.”

Despite his troubled mien Thor grins, rising to form. “There is nothing in you that is soft,” he smirks. To prove it he pushes Loki back beneath him. Hooks Loki’s ankles over shoulders broad as mountains and buries himself to the hilt without pause for breath. Any other would be split apart by Thor’s thrust but Loki is made for this, fits him as a sheath. Put together they make more sense than apart. All their lives they have been drawn like seeking magnets, resistance soon enough worn down, and there will come the day when they cannot pull apart; but it is not now. 

Now, Thor takes him with deep, thorough strokes, his killing fists closed tight in midnight hair, his eyes held open, his lips pressing Loki’s. With Thor’s tongue in his mouth he cannot speak; it is the only time that is ever true. Thor alone can silence him. He can make Thor roar, a sound louder than thunder.

The first time that they did this Thor shook above him, his face twisted with doubt and self-loathing, his fingers clenching as he held Loki down; and afterward he beat his breast at his terrible weakness, and knelt in the dust at Loki’s side and begged forgiveness; and Loki, silenced, had turned over onto his knees and Thor had him again, his tears like scalding oil where they ran down Loki’s back. 

The past is very far, to see Thor’s determined face now. Loki would almost miss the melodrama of the conflicted brothers were it not so good to have Thor seizing him as he was intended, without scruple or reserve. Thor like this would consume any other; Loki taunts him for more. Even after they spend as one, rocking the ship, knocking them off-course a hundred miles, they do not part: Thor keeps himself enclosed, and Loki’s nails are claws in Thor’s skin, keeping him close. 

This is their safest space. Like this, they rest, before the end of the worlds.

Later, at Jane’s confused call, they emerge from below. Thor goes to sit with her at the prow while Loki guides through the clouds. When she is soothed, Thor looks back over his shoulder, his hair riled by wind. His eyes find Loki’s, and his eyes are like they used to be, full of love and trust and great expectations. They should cut through Loki like knives, but Loki is a master of daggers.

He winks back at Thor, and charts out their course.


End file.
